The Kurds' choice

One of the obvious results of the 7 June elections was that a significant portion of the Kurdish vote, compared with previous elections, broke away from the AK Parti and shifted to the HDP, which defines itself as a Kurdish nationalist party. As a way of making sense of this break, attention concentrated on the question of why the Kurds had broken away from the AK Parti.

To which mistake of the AK Parti could the Kurds' break be seen as a reaction? The question of why the Kurds broke away from the AK Parti, a party that has struggled, shielding itself with its own chest, against all the wrongs committed against the Kurds in the history of the Republic of Turkey, and that, in the words of its leader, has not shrunk from taking political risks if risks must be taken, from drinking hemlock if hemlock must be drunk, from paying a political price if a price must be paid, cannot, it seems, be explained by the AK Parti's attitudes alone. After all, the real reasons for this movement need to be understood within the world of those Kurds who, out of their favor toward the AK Parti, turned away from it and toward the HDP.

It is a fact that a significant part of the Kurdish population has inclined toward a party that has made open Kurdish nationalism its cause, rather than toward the AK Parti, which has defined itself as opposed to every kind of ethnic nationalism. This inclination, without going as far as nationalism, may also be a simple expression of a reaction the Kurds show toward the AK Parti for one reason or another.

It may also be an expression of accepting nationalism as the sole determinant of one's political preference, whatever the AK Parti or any other party does. Building one's political preference on nationalism is a possibility across the entire political spectrum. There is not much to say about that. One can debate the meaning and value of nationalism, and how right or wrong the preferences in this regard are. But in the end we must not forget that this too is a possible and legitimate choice on the political ground. Moreover, one may also ask how far the HDP, or a party with left-socialist, even Baathist tendencies, can answer the expectations, values and world of meaning of a Kurdish nationalist.

After all, if Kurdish nationalism is a movement to preserve the essence of an identity, it is our duty to recall that today the HDPKK is making the Kurds experience the greatest assimilation in Kurdish history, as a kind of Kurdish Kemalism. Whatever Kemalism, as a Turkish nationalism, left of Turkishness to the Turks, the Kurdish political movement undoubtedly leaves the Kurds far less of Kurdishness.

Just look at the Kurdish used in this political movement's television or printed publications, and compare how much it resembles the Kurdish used by the Kurdish people. That is enough.

If that is not enough, take a look, if you like, at how the political and traditional values of the Kurds are being eroded within this movement.

You may also look at the literature developed around the flight of Kurdish girls to the mountains, among Kurds so attached to their honor and custom that even a girl's elopement with a husband, even if with marriage in mind, produces endless blood feuds. You will see what an extraordinary transformation relations between men and women and the whole traditional culture have undergone. Not counting this as assimilation shows that the Kurds are being injected with a far heavier dose of the poison that all nationalisms inject into all ethnic structures.

Even so, the drift of some Kurds toward Kurdish nationalism is of course their own choice. What falls to us is to head off this path, and to ensure that Kurds develop their political preferences in favor of Islam, not by practicing more Kurdish nationalism as a kind of bribe, but by reminding them of Islam's universal principle of tawhid. Otherwise, once you enter a race to answer a nationalist expectation, you are not doing those people a favor.

There is also no point of satiety for the addressees of answers given to nationalist expectations through populist approaches. But that is not the problem either. The problem is the sincere, principled and consistent stance that must be taken, as a matter of principle, against ethnic nationalism.

The AK Parti has put an end to the denial and assimilation of Kurdish identity, and has made all the arrangements that will ensure that Kurds are recognized as Kurds, that their language is spoken freely at every level, and that every Kurd can regard himself with dignity as a Kurd and a first-class citizen. But beyond this, it also has a sensitivity against drifting toward an ethnic-nationalist position.

In many assessments after the 7 June elections, a state of frenzy prevailed, asking in astonishment how and why the Kurdish votes had slipped away. After this development, even the question was asked of how Islam had lost the Kurds. As if Islam and the AK Parti were identical, and as if the Kurds' voting for the HDP were abandoning Islam...

Truly, none of the perceptions in this direction can be considered entirely unimportant. But let us note at once that there can be no such thing as Islam losing any person, any ethnic group or human being. Such a perception is in itself a reflection of ethnic pride. It is a repetition of the ignorant, reproachful attitude that the Bedouins displayed toward the Prophet. The answer that God ordered the Prophet to give to this Bedouin attitude, recounted in the Surah al-Hujurat, is an eternal lesson: "Do not put me under obligation because you became Muslims; rather, God puts you under obligation for having guided you."

No ethnic group is a gain for Islam. Arabs, Turks and Kurds alike earned honor through being Muslim and wrote brilliant pages on the stage of history thanks to Islamic identity, character and discipline. No ethnic group that does not know this has had, or will have, any good for itself or for anyone else. Islam is a source of honor for every person and every ethnic group that chooses it and finds guidance through it.

Moreover, the idea that all of the Kurds have shifted in a free choice to the HDP, and therefore to a secular Kurdish nationalist movement, is also not true. As we said before, the picture that emerged from an election that could not take place independently of every kind of climate of pressure in the region cannot be called an election. That is why we said that the question "Why did the Kurds not vote for the AK Parti?" should be corrected to "Why could the Kurds not vote for the AK Parti?"

To be able to talk about a preference, we need to see a preference expressed under truly free conditions. In an environment where the HDP's election campaign was run by the armed elements of the PKK and where even three or five people who did not vote for the HDP were pursued, how can we say that the Kurds really made a choice?